Refiguring National Cinema in Films about Labour, Money, and Debt

Abstract

This chapter brings into sharper focus the theme of precarity by analyzing films about labour, money, and debt that train a lens on precarious, racialized bodies made disposable in and by global neoliberalism: Arslan’s Dealer (1998); Maccarone’s Unveiled (2005); Akın’s The Edge of Heaven (2007); and Petzold’s Jerichow (2008). Considering how these films find a form to depict labour, money, and debt, this chapter develops indebtedness as a trope that binds together their narrative and aesthetic language. These films contribute to the reconfiguration of German national cinema by centering migrant characters, reflecting on their perspectives and experiences, and making visible their subaltern status, while also developing their representation via an explicit engagement with German film history.